Hackers Target Sacramento Transit System and Demand $8,000 Ransom

The ransomware attacks are increasing each year. In 2016, hackers made over $1 billion off of ransomware and we shouldn’t be surprised if the numbers have gone up by the end of 2017. Here’s another story that you can add to the list. This time it’s the transit system in Sacramento. The Sacramento Bee has reported that hacker, or hackers, defaced Sacramento Regional Transit (SacRT) system couple of days ago on Saturday November 18, 2017. The notice on the home page said

“I’m sorry to modify the home page, i’m good hacker, i I just want to help you fix these vulnerability. This is one of the loopholes, modify the home page …”

When an employee went into the SacRT system to figure out what was going on, that caused the virtual servers to be erased. Apparently, that was a trap set by the hackers. This happened on Sunday. Then on Monday, the hackers sent a Facebook message to SacRT that said:

“hello, I will always attack your website, we are hackers. we can do everything. Pay us now to stop attacking.”

SacRT is trying to restore the system. They believe they know how the hackers got into the system and what was going on. That’s why they feel this hack was more about destruction, rather than data theft. The hackers demanded $8,000 in bitcoin currency as a ransom. The agency didn’t pay the ransom and is working on securing their system to prevent future attacks. Luckily, the bus and rail service has not been impacted. The hack affected internal operations, such as dispatching employees using the computer system and assigning bus routes.

Just like every organization does in all such cases, the agency is going to hire an expert to protect their system from any future hacks.

Only four days ago on November 16, 2017, the city of Spring Hill, Tennessee suffered a ransomware attack when the city refused to pay $250,000 ransom. The city was pretty much paralyzed because the IT department was too busy restoring the database from the backups. According to scmagazine.com, “The attack has locked city workers out of their email accounts, and residents are unable to make online payments, use payment cards to pay utility bills and court fines, or conduct any other business transaction. Instead, the city is asking that payments be made by check, and then either dropped off or mailed.”

Although regular backups can help somewhat when it comes to dealing with ransomware, it only allows you to restore the data from the backups. As you can tell by most ransomware attacks, the effects can be devastating. You not only have to restore the system, you also have to try and figure out exactly how the hackers got into the system in the first place so you can prevent future attacks. That’s not always an easy task. Ransomware can still cripple the systems and bring a city’s business to a screeching halt.

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